There is rising anger among trade unionists, environmentalists and civil society groups in Gabon after a wood company, Rain Forest Management (RFM), sacked 38 fixed-term workers last month in Mbomao, Ogooué-Ivindo province.

RFM, a Gabonese wood processing company with Malaysian investment, is one of several exploiting the rich natural forests in Gabon. The forestry sector is the country’s second source of foreign exchange after oil.

RFM and the woodworkers had been locked in a lengthy dispute over working conditions, lack of contacts and legal working hours, among other complaints.

According to the Entente Syndicale des Travailleurs du Gabon (ENSYTG) union, RFM refused to negotiate with them and workers who were planning to take part in trade union meetings were threatened and intimidated.“Although Gabon’s forests are often described as being relatively undamaged and offering great potential for long-term sustainable timber production, it is clear that industrial forestry within the current policy framework threatens their future integrity and the country’s biodiversity” – Forests Monitor

After numerous threats and charges of intimidation, on Feb. 17, as the employees were returning to work, RFM called on police to evict them from their company-supplied dormitories, claiming that the workers had violated company rules.

The dismissals were linked to worker protests over poor working conditions, unsanitary housing infested with rats, cockroaches and snakes, demands for legal working hours and payment of wages on time.

Léon Mébiame Evoung, president of ENSYTG, told IPS that the workers were simply calling on the company to respect basic rights and provide a pharmacy and an infirmary that should be managed by competent Gabonese health professionals.

RFM failed to meet any of these demands, said the union official. Instead, it decided to execute its earlier threat by firing all protesting workers.

The action has provoked the ire of civil society groups and syndicates, including Building and Wood Workers’ International (BWINT), which is circulating an online petition to help the strikers’ return to their jobs.

Marc Ona Essangui, founder of the environmental NGO Brainforest and president of Environment Gabon, a network of NGOs, told IPS in an online interview that he could not accept such “gross suppression” of workers’ rights. “I have signed up to the call to protect the workers,” he said.

“I strongly protest against the dismissal of these workers, which is clearly linked to their strike action,” he insisted. Such anti-union activities, he added, violate International Labour Office (ILO) conventions 87 and 98 (on freedom of association and the right to organise and bargain collectively, respectively).

Along with other environmentalists in the region, Essangui – who once received a suspended sentence for accusing a presidential ally of exploiting timber, palm oil and rubber in Gabon’s “favourable agri-climate” – is troubled by risks to the region’s natural forests due to development activities.

The Gabonese government and international donors, however, regard the exploitation of timber as central to the country’s macroeconomic development.

According to Forests Monitor, an NGO that supports forest-dependent people, “although Gabon’s forests are often described as being relatively undamaged and offering great potential for long-term sustainable timber production, it is clear that industrial forestry within the current policy framework threatens their future integrity and the country’s biodiversity.”

The NGO notes that “production levels are already considerably above the official sustainable production estimates and are set to continue rising”, meaning that “the contribution which forestry sector revenues make to the country’s population as a whole and to people living in the locality of forestry operations is questionable.”

On its website, the World Resources Institute (WRI) notes that “nowhere is the pressure (on resources) more intense than in Gabon, a nation with 80 percent of its territory covered by dense tropical forest. With resource use demands spiralling in recent years, Gabon urgently needs better forest management planning if the government is to achieve its goal of becoming an emerging economy while preserving the country’s natural resources.”

RFM’s woodworking factory lies at the centre of three national parks – Lope, Crystal Mountain, and Ivindo – and to the east of Libreville. The park area is a small fraction of the land marked for development on a WRI map. The wood used by RFM is locally sourced.

Established in 2008, RFM produces windows and doors for the Gabonese domestic market. It exports semi-finished products to Asia, Europe and the Middle East. The company employs more than 700 workers, with a Gabonese majority.

Since November 2009, when log exports were banned, the formal economy production of processed wood has increased significantly.

According to a WRI report titled ‘A First Look at Logging in Gabon’, compiled by seven Gabonese environmental organisations, “Gabon has vast forest resources, but rapid growth of logging activity may threaten those resources. If managed properly, Gabon’s forests could offer long-term revenues without compromising the ecosystems’ natural functions.”

However, the authors continued, “(we) found information about forest development unreliable, inconsistent, and very difficult to obtain. We believe that more public information will promote accountability and transparency and favour the implementation of commitments made to manage and protect the world’s forests, which would significantly slow forest degradation around the world.”

Edited by Lisa Vives/Phil Harris    

Relatives of victims of workplace fatalities have been staging monthly vigils in central Istanbul for the past two years, asking for those responsible for the deaths to be identified and held accountable. Photo courtesy of Worker Families in Pursuit of Justice

By Jennifer Hattam
ISTANBUL, Jun 8 2014 (IPS)

The half-built Metsan Nexus complex towers over Istanbul’s Kartal district, just one of dozens of massive, high-end, multi-use development projects that are transforming the city’s skyline. On May 31, three men were working outside the building’s 16th floor when the construction scaffolding beneath them gave way, sending them plummeting to their deaths.

“The scaffolding does not collapse spontaneously, when it is erected properly. The workers do not crash on the ground, unless there is lack of safety precautions,” urban researcher Yaşar Adanalı wrote following the incident in a scathing post on his Reclaim Istanbul blog.

Worker safety issues in Turkey’s mining industry have been the subject of a national outcry following the mid-May deaths of at least 301 workers in one deadly incident in a coal mine in Soma, a town in western Turkey. But the country’s construction sector, which has been a key driver of Turkey’s economy as it boomed over much of the last decade, is no less perilous for workers.“[Turkey’s current] model of growth based on construction has triggered further dangers in terms of health and safety [due to] the speed of construction and a desire to reduce costs in a competitive environment” – activist Demet Ş. Dinler

“Construction workers [in Turkey] face hard and dangerous working conditions, with very long work hours, insufficient usage of protective equipment, and low salaries,” says Dr. Ercan Duman, an occupational physician and member of the Istanbul Occupational Health and Safety Council.

He identified “falls from height” as the leading cause of worker death on Turkish construction sites and “being struck by objects” as the top source of injuries.

According to the Istanbul-based advocacy group Worker Families in Pursuit of Justice, many fatal falls happen because proper mechanisms for attaching safety harnesses are never installed, forcing workers to clip and unclip themselves to the scaffolding as they move around the building.

Turkey’s construction sector accounted for 34.4 percent of worker deaths – 256 out of a total of 744, the most of any industry – in 2012, according to data from the national Social Security Institution; construction ranked third, after the metal industry and mining, in terms of workplace injuries.

The Turkish government has touted its progress in reducing workplace deaths. Speaking at the 7th International Conference on Occupational Health and Safety, which Istanbul hosted in early May, Labour and Social Security Minister Faruk Çelik pointed out that the Turkish workforce had grown by 128 percent between 2002 and 2012 and the number of new workplaces by 111 percent. “Despite these increases, the number of fatalities per 100,000 workers has decreased from 17 to 6,” Çelik said.

That number is still significantly higher than the EU15 average of 1.5 fatalities per 100,000 workers, and workers’ advocates in Turkey say death and injury rates are underreported due to the large number of unregistered workers – who make up an estimated 30 to 40 percent of the country’s total workforce – and the growing prevalence of subcontractors, who now account for more than 1 million workers.

“The widespread use of labour subcontracting [in Turkey] is one of the reasons for the decline in workplace safety, as subcontractors fail to provide the necessary training or equipment to workers and refuse to observe occupational health and safety measures in the workplace,” says Makbule Sahan, a Human and Trade Union Rights Officer at the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), which ranked Turkey among the world’s worst countries for workers in its Global Rights Index 2014.

Thirteen subcontracting firms employ approximately 2,000 workers at the Maslak 1453 project site, another luxury multi-use development currently under construction in Istanbul. A worker employed by one of these subcontractors died there on May 27 after being hit on the head by a piece of iron. Fellow workers told Turkish press outlets that an ambulance was not standing by at the site as required, and that netting was not in place to catch falling objects [or persons].

Work has continued on the Maslak 1453 site despite a court order in April ruling that it should be halted over environmental concerns. The project’s owner, construction mogul Ali Ağaoğlu, was called in for questioning in December as part of a sweeping probe alleging widespread corruption in the building sector.

Ağaoğlu, who was released without charge, has become one of Turkey’s richest men over the country’s decade-long building boom, which has seen nearly 600 billion dollars invested in new construction, and the land area approved for building projects increase by almost fivefold, according to a Bloomberg report in January.

Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has repeatedly vowed to make the country one of the world’s top 10 economies by 2023. But that emphasis on rapid growth comes at a cost, according to researcher and activist Demet Ş. Dinler.

“[Turkey’s current] model of growth based on construction has triggered further dangers in terms of health and safety [due to] the speed of construction and a desire to reduce costs in a competitive environment,” says Dinler, a PhD candidate in the Department of Development Studies at the University of London.

“Health and safety is the responsibility of the main employer but the fragmented structure of the work process makes it difficult to check whether measures have been taken and apply to all workers on the site,” she adds.

“[And] main employers put pressure on subcontractors, who in turn put pressure on workers to complete the projects in a [shorter] period of time and with the lowest costs.”

Although Turkish labour law obliges employers to “provide for the work-related health and safety of workers,” Dinler says there is “little incentive for employers to take the necessary measures” due to the lack of enforcement mechanisms or serious legal sanctions for non-compliance.

Unions that might have pushed for stronger protections have seen their right to organise and strike limited further over the past decade and their membership numbers have dwindled by 40 percent.

Even when workplace deaths occur en masse, fault-finding investigations proceed slowly, according to the Worker Families in Pursuit of Justice. Members of the group have been holding monthly vigils in central Istanbul for two years, displaying photos of lost loved ones such as the 11 workers killed in March 2012 when a fire broke out among the dormitory tents where they were living on the construction site for the Marmara Park shopping mall in the city’s Esenyurt district.

According to Dinler, the use of tents as worker housing was prohibited after this deadly blaze, but a report by the Association of Construction Workers found them still in common use a year later, and frequently overcrowded and unsafe.

And although inspectors from the Labour and Social Security Ministry identified various safety violations at the Esenyurt site, including an improperly installed electrical system and a lack of emergency exits or fire-fighting equipment, no one has yet been held legally responsible.

An expert report presented at a new court hearing this week on the incident suggested that the workers bore “secondary responsibility” for their own deaths because they had stacked up foam mattresses on a bed next to the tent’s only doorway, impeding their exit when the fire broke out.

Foreign workers rallying in Tokyo against discrimination and denial of basic rights. Credit: Catherine Makino/IPS.

By Suvendrini Kakuchi
TOKYO, Apr 23 2014 (IPS)

Desperate for more workers to support a construction boom, Japan has proposed to expand its controversial foreign trainee programme to permit more unskilled labour from Asia to work in Japanese companies for five years from the current three years.
The internship plan launched in 1993 invites foreign trainees to work in Japanese companies under the slogan of learning new technologies before returning home.

But it is ridden with problems."The new move is a clear example of a ‘use and discard foreign labour’ goal."

More than 200 companies were reported in 2012 for abuses such as low pay and long working hours for foreign workers. Activists view the trainee system as a blatant stop-gap measure to counter Japan’s aging population – a quarter of its 130 million people are above 65. From a peak of 83 million workers in 1995, their number had fallen by almost five million in 2012.

The construction industry badly needs foreigners for jobs such as plasterers and mold makers.

The government has now proposed a plan for trainees to extend their visas by two years for “designated activities” to pave the way for employment for trainees.

Labour activists say the move is suspiciously timed for Japan to host Olympics 2020, and that it will do little for the stated policy of the trainee system to exchange technology with developing countries.

“Japan’s immigration policy refuses to treat migrant workers as people with rights that must be protected. The new move is a clear example of a ‘use and discard foreign labour’ goal,” Ippei Torii, head of the foreign workers branch at Zentotsu, a leading labour organisation, tells IPS.

Zentotsu has taken up negotiations on behalf of several foreign trainees who have been discriminated against by their employees. A typical example is the ongoing cases of six Chinese women who were paid four dollars an hour, half of the official minimum wage, for three years at a sewing factory in rural Japan.

“They could not escape because each was saddled with 8,000 dollars in debt they had incurred in their home towns in China to brokers,” says Ippei.

Currently 19 percent – or 136,603 – of all foreign workers in Japan are trainees. Nationals from China, Vietnam and the Philippines top the list. About 15,000 of the foreigners are employed in construction. Their average wage is around 1,200 dollars per month, plus payment for overtime work.

Jotaro Kato at the Asian People’s Friendship Society (APFS) tells IPS that the government must enact a working visa for unskilled workers. “The [proposed] increase in foreign trainees smacks of a typical bureaucratic approach and is not a sustainable solution to a crucial national issue.”

Following a clampdown, the number of foreigners overstaying has dropped to about 6,000, from a high of 250,000 recorded in the nineties. “Because of the crackdown, poor people from Asia are now entering Japan as trainees or extending their stay by applying for refugee status, or marrying local people in a desperate bid to live here,” Kato tells IPS.

The Construction Workers Union is opposed to the new trainee plan on the basis that it would increase the number of low-paid foreigners, posing a risk to the higher salaries of Japanese workers.

The Japan Federation of Construction issued a statement last week calling for doubling the number of female workers from the current 90,000 over the next five years to bridge the gap between supply and demand.

In a Yomuiri newspaper public opinion survey in March, only 10 percent of those polled were ready to accept unskilled migrant workers, because of concerns such as crime. An overwhelming 85 percent supported more women in the workforce as a solution.

Japan has an embarrassingly low acceptance of foreigners – less than two percent of the Japanese population. This includes almost 400,000 people under the Special Permanent Residents category reserved for people of Korean descent who were born in Japan but have not become citizens.

With only 1.1 percent of its workforce comprising foreigners, Japan is at the bottom of the list among industrialised countries. Germany comparatively has 9.4 percent and the United Kingdom 7.6 percent.

Even South Korea, facing a workers crunch, showed higher figures at 2.2 percent in 2011, the result of offers of a three-year working permit for foreign labour.

In the face of the looming demographic crisis, Japan too has had to make some changes in its immigration policies.

Two Economic Partnership Agreements were signed with Indonesia and the Philippines in 2008 that included a provision for nurses and caregivers from those countries to work in Japan. About 750 nurses have arrived in the past five years.

Japan’s nursing industry is grappling with a shortfall of 43,000 nurses, according to the Health and Welfare Ministry. Many Japanese nurses quit after starting a family because they are unable to cope with the long working hours in hospitals.

Japan introduced a policy in 1990 to permit Latin Americans of Japanese descent to work as temporary migrant labourers. More than 220,000 arrived, mostly from Brazil. These Nikkeijin as they are called are descendants of Japanese who had emigrated to Latin America in the 1920s.

The Nikkeijin policy changed soon after the 2008 global financial crisis, when the government took the unprecedented measure of offering free transport to Japanese Brazilians who opted to return to Brazil.

Indonesian and Filipino caregivers who study and work in Japan have struggled with passing tests to continue nursing in Japan. Of the first 104 Indonesians candidates, just 24 passed in 2011. Others are still studying.

“The bottom line must be a policy that accepts overseas unskilled workers as human beings who will enter Japan to work and start new lives,” says Jun Saito at the Japan Centre for Economic Research, a leading think-tank. “They are not robots to be returned after their visas end.”

Workers returning to Kerala from the Gulf. Credit: K.S. Harikrishnan/IPS.

By K. S. Harikrishnan
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, India , Jan 8 2014 (IPS)

Ashik Rehman, 47, worked as a labourer in the southern Indian state of Kerala. He left for Saudi Arabia two years ago, hoping to earn enough to buy a house in his native place. Now he is back and staring at a bleak future.

Rehman was promised a shop salesman’s job by his travel agent. But after he landed in the Saudi capital Riyadh, he was sent to work at a construction site as a sweeper. His sponsor did not take legal measures to correct his work permit.

“I was treated like a slave there. I was not given proper food, leave or salary,” he told IPS.“Many sponsors are evasive when it comes to giving legal status to workers."

To make things worse, Saudi Arabia enforced a naturalisation rule called Nitaqat, forcing Rehman to return to his hometown Kozhikode in Kerala last October. He has not found a job yet.

The Nitaqat law, announced in 2011, makes it mandatory for all private firms to recruit at least 10 percent Saudi nationals in their labour force. For expatriates who do not have proper job or visa documents, the law entails punitive measures such as arrest or deportation.

With 2.8 million Indians making up the largest expatriate community in Saudi Arabia, the law has hit those who have been in the kingdom without proper work documents.

“Many sponsors are evasive when it comes to giving legal status to workers. Because of the disinterest of my sponsor, I had to return. Now I am living in a rented house and trying to figure out how to earn my living,” Rehman told IPS.

According to Indian government estimates, 134,000 workers have returned due to implementation of the new Nitaqat policy.

“Travel agents make things more difficult for hapless migrant workers,” Jamaludeen, who has also returned, told IPS. “They fabricate jobs and employers who don’t exist. Before the migrants can figure out they have been hoodwinked, they find themselves in farmhouses in remote areas and unknown agricultural fields in the deserts.”

The reverse migration of undocumented workers from Saudi Arabia has prompted the returnees to demand that the Indian government implement a comprehensive rehabilitation package for expatriates.

“Since the Gulf War of 1990-1991, we have been hearing false promises of rehabilitation packages,” said S. Ahmed, chairman of the NRI Coordination Council. He said the government had done little to help expatriates who had  to return because of the Nitaqat rule. The Council demanded that all non-resident families that return from Saudi Arabia be included in a comprehensive health insurance project.

The effects of Nitaqat are showing up in many ways in India particularly in sectors dependent on Gulf money. These include a slowdown in construction work, in the real estate business, in motor vehicle sales and dwindling wages of daily workers.

This is particularly true of Kerala because, of the 2.8 million Indians in Saudi Arabia, one million are from this state. After the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia is the most favoured destination for the state’s migrant population.

Dr. Sree Nair, a Kerala-based migration researcher, said the government should make sure that the returnees are rehabilitated and resettled in their homeland.

“Return migrants do not attract much attention from the government. But Nitaqat has brought about a situation where the void in government planning on migration and a remittance-dependent economy has become evident,” she told IPS.

“The services for returnees are inadequate. Not just financial assistance but proper guidance on possible areas of utilising their skills in domestic or foreign labour markets should also be provided. Most returnees are not looking for freebies from the government but for an appropriate re-entry into job markets,” she told IPS.

Kerala is the only state in the country which has announced rehabilitation measures for returnees, including interest-free loans and services to help them find jobs in other Gulf countries.

Abu Ali, who gives legal aid to foreign workers in Jeddah, said there were many foreigners, including Indians, who were declared to be absconding by their sponsors as the latter wanted to avoid making final settlements.

“Many migrants may have been working there for more than 10 years, but there is no legal forum to challenge sponsors who cheat,” he told IPS.

K.U. Iqbal, a Riyadh–based reporter of Malayalam News, a sister publication of Arab News, told IPS over the phone that 1.3 million Indian workers, who initially did not have proper documents, had regularised their work permits and completed other legalities.

“The majority of Indians corrected their documents. It is said that a few migrants did not apply for legal status. They will face consequences if caught by the authorities,” he said.

A group of returnees told IPS that unskilled workers, part-time office workers and school teachers have been particularly badly hit by the Nitaqat rule.

Sharafudeen, who hails from Malappuram, said teachers without proper documents have been granted a reprieve by the Ministry of Education. “But many small shops and restaurants, which used to regularly hire workers without documents, have been closed throughout the Kingdom.”

Labour inspectors swooped down on thousands of illegal workers in a series of raids across the Kingdom after the amnesty period for expatriates to legalise their work status expired.

Shameem Ahmed, general manager of the Thiruvananthapuram-based Overseas Development and Employment Promotion Consultants, quoted Indian government officials in Riyadh to say that many workers were unwilling to go back to India as they were wary of being unemployed and increasing the financial burden on their families.

“Many workers have not been reporting for work for fear of arrest and deportation. Numerous construction companies that were largely dependent on the illegal workforce have suspended their projects altogether. Housing unit prices are set to increase dramatically due to the shortage of workers,” said Shameem Ahmed.

According to the World Bank, India is the top beneficiary of remittances from Saudi Arabia with 8.4 billion dollars received in 2012. But many of the people behind those remittances now find that life has changed – for the worse.

Hasina, one of the 2,438 Rana Plaza workers that came out alive, by the remains of the factory. Credit: Robert Stefanicki/IPS.

By Robert Stefanicki
DHAKA, Oct 30 2013 (IPS)

Six months after the worst man-made disaster in Bangladesh’s history, safety conditions in garment factories have a chance to improve. But not the lives of survivors or the victims’ next of kin.

On Apr. 24, the collapse of Rana Plaza factory building took 1,133 lives of mostly female workers. The disaster was too big to ignore. The unprecedented scale of the tragedy shocked people the world over, many of them dressed in clothes made in Bangladesh on request of giants such as Tesco, Carrefour, Benetton or Walmart.

Today, the site in the Dhaka suburb is enclosed by a barbed wire and metal fence covered with banners. ‘How long do we have to wait for compensation for the death of our parents ?’ asks one.“Foreign clients should not avoid responsibility, even if the workers’ imagination is too narrow to blame them."

What was left of Rana Plaza can be seen from the top floor of a neighbouring building. Debris has been cleared, but the bodies of two cars stick out of a vast pool of mud water.

“They were parked in an underground garage,” Hassan, one of the volunteer rescuers told IPS. His team, he said, took some 400 people out of the rubble.

A survivor, Hasina, pulled her scarf up showing a deformed right arm with extensive scars.

“That day I came to work at 8:30. I heard from my colleagues about the cracks in the wall. We did not want to enter the building, but the supervisor forced us,” she told IPS. “Then the power was gone and soon after it happened.”

A piece of the ceiling pinned Hasina down. She was rescued the same evening. Today the young woman can barely move her hand, and is unable to work.

Hasina received compensation of 36,000 taka (450 dollars). The Bangladesh Garment Manufactures & Exporters Association (BGMEA), a powerful guild, promised to pay survivors a salary, so Hasina still gets 10,000 taka a month.

She is undergoing rehabilitation. Treatment is free, but she complains that commuting by rickshaw costs 20 taka each time – an amount that adds up.

The Rana Plaza tragedy resulted in an outpouring of commitments from governments, local and global institutions, groups and individuals.

According to some reports, each family of the deceased and seriously injured received up to a million taka – but IPS did not meet anybody who got anything close to that amount.

The compensation was paid mostly by the government of Bangladesh. Irish retailer Primark (one of the brands whose clothes were produced at Rana Plaza) paid a short-term allowance of 16,000 taka (200 dollars) to each victim, in what unwittingly made Primark the most recognisable brand in Bangladesh.

Long-term compensation is still under negotiation. The bad omen was that in a September meeting on this issue organised in Geneva with the support of the United Nations International Labour Organisation (ILO), only nine of the 29 companies that ordered production at Rana Plaza were present.

With 3.6 million people working in the garment industry, Bangladesh is the world’s second-largest clothing exporter after China. About 60 percent of exports go to Europe and 23 percent to the United States. The minimum wage for a garment worker is 38 dollars a month, though after a massive street demonstration recently, an increase is imminent.

Yet the survivors are far from blaming the West for what happened at Rana Plaza. Usually they do not know which brand made an order for clothes they were sewing.

Abdulrahman, who lost his wife Sharifa in the collapse (he got a total of 136,000 taka, or 1,700 dollars, in compensation plus a rickshaw from local NGO Karmojibi Nari), does not even blame the owner of the building, since “he did not order the factory owners to place the power generators on the upper floor instead of on the ground floor.” It was the generators’ vibrations that caused the collapse.

Abdulrahman blames only the factory owners, who along with the building’s owner Sohel Rana, are under arrest, awaiting trial.

What penalty is appropriate for Sharifa’s death? “I don’t want the manufacturer to be hanged. A life sentence would be enough. And he should apologise,” the mourning widower said.

“Foreign clients should not avoid responsibility, even if the workers’ imagination is too narrow to blame them,” said Dr. Khondaker Moazzem of the Centre for Policy Dialogue in Dhaka.

According to the researcher, who co-authored the report ‘100 Days of Rana Plaza Tragedy’, the compensation paid to the victims so far is too small. “According to some independent calculations the injured workers should get an average of more than two million taka.”

Families of the missing are in the worst situation. So far, 332 workers have not been identified or found, and their relatives are in a limbo, with no right to any compensation.

For the garments industry, Rana Plaza seems to have been a wake-up call. Six months on, new deals to improve safety of the workers are in place.

One is called ‘The accord on fire and factory safety in Bangladesh’. It was signed (under pressure from customers and public opinion) by more than 100 retailers and brands, mostly from Europe. Before the end of this year they plan to start “independent” inspections at about 1,600 factories used by them.

In another measure, employees will be trained to exercise their rights, including the right to refuse entry into a building considered unsafe.

‘The alliance for Bangladesh worker safety’ has been set up, and 23 brands, mostly from the U.S., have joined. This factory safety deal is seen as less rigorous than the other accord because its signatories are not legally bound by their commitments, and it is not linked to unions or workers’ rights groups.

Not least, the government in Dhaka and the ILO, with the backing of the British and Dutch governments, have launched a 25-million-dollar plan to provide technical expertise for building and fire safety assessments in the country’s garment trade over the next three-and-a-half years.

Amid doubts on the supply of professional and incorruptible inspectors for the job, individual brands have already inspected more than 500 factories themselves.

Since the Rana Plaza disaster, the authorities in Bangladesh are more sensitive to any breach of safety rules and are keen to close unsafe factories as never before. The manufacturers themselves prefer to do that rather than to risk a new tragedy. The BGMEA has so far inspected 620 plants and ordered the closure of 20.

Everybody in Bangladesh agrees that such a tragedy must never be repeated. But the way ahead is far. Three weeks ago, a fire ripped through the Aswad garments factory in a Dhaka suburb. Ten workers died.

Striking workers: Egypt’s new military-led government has adopted the same tough line on labour activism and trade unions as its predecessors. Credit: Cam McGrath/IPS.

By Cam McGrath
CAIRO, Sep 9 2013 (IPS)

It was the Egyptian state’s brutal restrictions on worker freedoms that transformed Kareem El-Beheiry from a disengaged lay worker into a tenacious labour activist.

In April 2008, El-Beheiry was arrested during mass demonstrations that followed a government crackdown on workers protesting low wages and rising living costs in Mahalla El-Kubra, an industrial city 100 kilometres north of Cairo. The young factory worker had used his mobile phone to capture and share video footage of fierce clashes between security forces and protesters until police swooped in and grabbed him.

Authorities accused El-Beheiry of using his blog on labour rights to instigate the Mahalla uprising, which originated at the textile mill where he worked. Three people were killed and hundreds injured in two days of rioting that engulfed the city after state security forces stormed the factory to prevent thousands of striking workers from gathering there.The Egyptian Centre for Social Rights reported 1,400 collective worker actions in 2011 and nearly 2,000 in 2012. It cited 2,400 social and economic protests during the first quarter of 2013.

El-Beheiry, now 28, recalls how he spent two months in prison, where he was abused, deprived of food, and tortured with electric shocks. Even after his release, he had to fight a legal battle to return to his job – the factory’s manager had sacked him for failing to show up for work during his imprisonment.

Reinstated on a court order, the flagged employee was transferred to the state-owned company’s Cairo office in 2009, where he was fired three months later on spurious charges.

“Every day I commuted to Cairo and signed in, but the management destroyed my attendance record and claimed I never showed up for work,” he says. “I have a court order (for my reinstatement), but the factory manager refuses to honour it.”

El-Beheiry’s ordeal exemplifies the extent to which the authoritarian regime of toppled president Hosni Mubarak was willing to go to isolate and intimidate dissident workers. The state tolerated a degree of political opposition, but when it came to labour issues, any action that threatened to galvanise workers into a cohesive labour movement was swiftly crushed.

Successive governments relied on the Egyptian Trade Union Federation (ETUF), a colossal state-backed labour organisation with 24 affiliated trade syndicates, to control workers and prevent them from engaging in industrial action. When strikes did break out, the regime smothered them with the riot police and hired thugs – and if that failed, called in the army.

“Mubarak only knew one way to deal with labour disputes: force,” says El-Beheiry.

The former mill worker, now a project manager at an NGO that helps workers unionise, says the 2008 Mahalla revolt was a game changer for Mubarak’s regime. The labour movement that emerged from the city’s grimy factories stirred Egypt’s long-quiescent working class, sparking a wave of wildcat strikes that played a crucial role in persuading the army to remove Mubarak during the 2011 uprising.

But the strike wave did not end with Mubarak’s fall. It smouldered and spread under the 18 months of military rule that followed, and during the year-long rule of president Mohamed Morsi, a former leader of the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Egyptian Centre for Social Rights (ECESR) reported 1,400 collective worker actions in 2011 and nearly 2,000 in 2012. It cited 2,400 social and economic protests during the first quarter of 2013, which coincided with Morsi’s presidency.

Joel Beinin, professor of Middle East history at Stanford University argues that despite small concessions aimed at ending strikes, Morsi largely relied on the same apparatus to quash labour dissent, and proved no more willing than his predecessors to address its underlying causes. At the heart of the underlying causes lie gross inequalities.

The Muslim Brotherhood leadership is “just as committed to the free-market fundamentalism promoted by the international financial institutions as the Mubarak regime was,” he writes. “When workers continued to strike and protest, Morsi’s administration, like the Mubarak regime, often granted their economic demands but ignored their political demands and undermined their organisational autonomy.”

Many of the demands are not new. During the twilight years of Mubarak’s rule, the government’s neo-liberal economic programme heightened unemployment, stripped welfare benefits, and widened the gap between rich and poor. Economic conditions have continued to deteriorate in post-revolution Egypt.

Impoverished workers are protesting for better wages, job security, payment of overdue benefits, and a liveable minimum wage. They have also demanded to exercise the right to freedom of association as guaranteed by international labour treaties to which Egypt is a signatory.

Workers have organised into thousands of independent trade unions since Egypt’s 2011 uprising, but their legitimacy is challenged by Mubarak-era legislation that only recognises ETUF-affiliated syndicates.

Adel Zakaria, editor of Kalam Sinaiyya (Workers’ Talk) magazine says that instead of reforming or dissolving the mammoth state-controlled labour body, Morsi’s administration “tried to co-opt it in order to control its four million members.”

Despite some promising signs, including the appointment of a veteran union organiser as labour minister, rights groups say the new regime is already shaping up to be a lot like its predecessors.

In August, security forces moved in to break up a month-long strike by steel mill workers protesting unpaid wages and bonuses. Days later, riot police forcefully put down a strike at a petroleum company over unpaid bonuses and intolerable working conditions.

Strike leaders have been sacked, and several protesting workers were reportedly referred to prosecutors under laws that criminalise unauthorised collective labour action.

The ruling regime has attempted to paint striking workers as counter-revolutionaries and members of the Muslim Brotherhood, a loaded association given the military’s crackdown on the group.

Military leader General Abdel Fattah El-Sisi has called on workers to take action against the “instigators” of strikes, and promised to deal firmly with those who disrupt the wheels of production.

“We will help quell this sedition,” he said. “Don’t let anybody interrupt production because this is another means of tearing the country down.”

Demanding rights for nuclear workers. Credit: National Union of General Workers.

By Suvendrini Kakuchi
TOKYO, Mar 11 2013 (IPS)

Japan has promised to scrap the crippled Fukushima nuclear reactors that faced the world’s worst nuclear accident. But Hiroyuki Watanabe, councillor in Iwaki City located 30 kilometres from the accident site, greets such intentions on the second anniversary of the disaster on Monday with misgiving.

“I see problems in Fukushima increasing, not decreasing. One of the biggest issues facing the country is the lack of qualified workers in Japan who can meet the enormous challenges ahead,” he told IPS.

Iwaki City lies in Fukushima prefecture, and was affected badly by the triple disaster – earthquake, tsunami and nuclear accident – that struck on Mar. 11, 2011.

The city is also host to J-Village, a former soccer field now the entry point to the zone around the stricken nuclear plant. Around 3,000 workers commute daily from the new base camp to work on the damaged reactors. They change into radiation protective gear before boarding special buses that take them to their work place almost an hour away.

Watanabe says he must fight for the rights of these workers who spend eight hours daily in dangerous surroundings.

“Workers face the risk of radioactive contamination. They are also employed by companies that do not treat them fairly in terms of work conditions and wages. My work is to protect them and make sure their employers and the government treat them right.”

Watanabe, a member of the Communist Party in the Iwaki local assembly, is not alone. The increasingly difficult looking road ahead as Japan struggles to deal with the damaged reactors has led labour unions to launch separate organisations to take up the issues faced by nuclear workers.

Keiji Watanabe, general secretary of the National Union of General Workers, said there is an urgent need to create a strong protection base for the nuclear workers. Dismantling the plant could take up to four decades.

“The grave situation in Fukushima as well as possible accidents in other nuclear plants in Japan demands the work of tens of thousands of men and women in the decades ahead. This unprecedented situation has awakened us to the dire need to set up units that can deal with the emerging labour issues,” he told IPS.

A major grouse among labour activists is the lack of clear rules for nuclear workers. Currently the workers, divided by skill ratings and age, are employed by hundreds of subcontracting companies that have contracts with Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO), which operates the Fukushima plant.

Several workers hired by companies have raised their voices against the system of “commissions” by temporary employment agencies.

About 90 dollars a day are added as special allowance to the salaries of temporary staff hired to clear contaminated debris and carry out repair work. But, said Hiroshi Goto who worked in the Fukushima Dai Ichi reactor, they face up to 50 percent deductions by the employers.

“This cannot be tolerated,” he reported in Sekai, a leading Japanese monthly magazine. He said workers are helpless in demanding better conditions from TEPCO.

Pressure from activists has led Japan to register stricter national contamination standards. Such conditions, labour activists say, would lead to a scarcity because many Japanese workers will have to leave their jobs to protect their health.

Difficult employment conditions have already resulted in a rapid drop of workers willing to work in Fukushima. Watanabe from Iwaki said the majority of the 3,000 working at the reactors are local people from Fukushima who lost their farming jobs because of the contamination of their land.

“The majority of the workers are older people who need jobs to survive,” he said, and this could mean that Japan has to import workers to meet the looming crunch.

Against this backdrop, conservative Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has declared that the nuclear reactors will be restarted for some time once their safety has been confirmed in order to provide the country with stable energy supply – 30 percent of the national energy supply is dependent on nuclear power.

In the meantime, almost 60,000 Fukushima residents remain dislocated from their homes with no prospect of returning due to the decontamination work.

“Two years after the Fukushima meltdown, we are still looking for answers to pave the way forward. The situation continues to be a nightmare lesson for Japan,” said Watanabe.

Bicycles are adding to Cambodia’s export basket, but at a price to workers. Credit: Michelle Tolson/IPS.

By Michelle Tolson
PHNOM PENH, Jan 28 2013 (IPS)

Cambodia’s export business is in the process of changing due to shifts in manufacturing in Asia. A business publication in the country has reported unexpected growth in the “machinery and transport equipment” sector and speculated it was as “probably bicycles.” But when Cambodia jumped into the top ten exporters of bicycles to the EU in 2012, it prompted the European Bicycle Manufacturers’ Association (EBMA) to investigate.

In 2011, 366,000 bikes were exported from Cambodia to the EU but “in the first half of 2012 the country managed to almost triple its bike export to the EU. Cambodia’s exports totaled close to 520,000 units in the first six months of 2012 compared to 140,000 in the same period of 2011,” according to Bikeeu.com.

The EBMA discovered that bicycle companies had moved their production to Cambodia from Thailand and China, citing increased expenses. The move is estimated to save 14 percent on taxes. A favourable scheme is in place for Least Developed Countries (LDCs) under the Generalized Scheme of Preferences (GSP) known as the Everything But Arms (EBA) agreement. The EBA allows countries ranked among the 48 LDCs to export products duty-free to the EU, except arms and ammunition.

Introduced at the beginning of 2011, it ushered in a surge of 53 percent in export growth to European countries that year, making the EU Cambodia’s second largest export partner after the U.S., according to local business reports.

Increasing expenses in China and Thailand have been attributed in part to rising wages. The minimum wage in Thailand was recently raised to 300 baht per day (10 dollars) and salaries in China in this business have risen to 400 dollars per month.  By contrast, minimum wages in Cambodia are set at just 61 dollars per month.

Strongman and A & J – listed as a subsidiary of Atlantic Cycle Co. – was reported to have originally opened their factory in Cambodia in 2005.  A government website listing investments into the country shows three bicycle factories in the “Tai Seng zone” in the Svay Reing province – A &J, Atlantic Cycle Co. and Smart Tech – and a fourth bike factory, Best Way Industry, in the ‘Manhattan zone’ in Svay Reing.

The Special Economic Zone (SEZ), according to a USAID report, offers pro-business perks to investors, a quick turnaround on red tape, low taxes, low wages, ease of doing business and a “young and educated” population. The report listed 1,500 workers in the bicycle industry. The minimum monthly salary then for factory work was 60 dollars a month, or 33 cents per hour, which would necessitate working six days per week to make 60 dollars monthly.  Dated 2008, this shows that wages have not risen in four years.

Local media recently revealed that a minimum wage increase for garment factories was in the works due to a labour shortage. Manufacturing overall has been shifting from China and Vietnam to Cambodia, and there are not enough workers in this country. The social affairs ministry has called for a wage increase but asked unions to agree on an amount – with suggested salaries ranging from 93 dollars to 150 dollars per month.

Bicycle factory workers face similar labour issues to garment workers.  Srun Srorn, activist and NGO consultant, explained how factory workers live on wages which amount to just two dollars per day.

Workers pool money and share a single meal. “Usually they do this: four friends x 500 riels (12 cents) = 2000 riels (50 cents). Then they eat some food which costs 500 riels or less. Usually the maximum is 5000 riels (1.25 dollars) for three or four people.”

Some factories include a meal stipend with the monthly salary.  Workers have short meal breaks and eat from vendors located just outside the factory gates.  Some employers include a transportation stipend.  There is no public transportation system in Cambodia, requiring workers to pay for motorbike taxi rides which cost 50 cents to a dollar.

In mid-December 2012, local media reported 1,000 workers at a Smart Tech bike factory in Svay Rieng went on strike to raise their salary. Two months prior, another strike had been reported at A& J.

Moeun Tola, a lawyer at the labour programme of the Community Legal Education Centre (CLEC) said he assisted the workers with legal advice. He said they were not part of a union but had organised the strike on their own. “They are not advised by anyone but we would give legal assistance and advice.”

Better Factories, an International Labour Organisation (ILO) programme, was created to help factory workers but at this time only assists garment factories, according to a spokesperson contacted by IPS.

IPS spoke with Nhanh Kosol, one of the workers, about the strike for an update. Kosol said that their wage is still just 61 dollars a month but the factory had agreed to a transportation subsidy of 13 dollars per month and overtime pay. They can work overtime between two hours and five hours a day, depending on the factory. Overtime of five hours earns an additional three dollars.

He thought the bike factory was “not too bad, because I have a job. The working conditions are some days good, and some days bad but the salary is not sufficient to support living and everything is always going up.” In his two years working there, the workers went on strike two or three times already and “it can help, but not too much.”

Bike EU listed the per unit price imported from Cambodia as about 200 euros. The U.S. has also recently had an upsurge in imports in bikes from Cambodia, according to foreign trade statistics. In 2009, 2.06 million dollars worth of goods were imported from Cambodia under the label “toys, shooting and sporting goods, and bicycles.” In 2010, the amount tripled to 6.8 million dollars and by 2011 it was 10.3 million dollars.

When asked how much he thought the bikes he helped make sold for, Kosol said workers thought between 1,400 dollars and 3,000 dollars, the low end of which is 25 times his monthly salary.

Egypt’s workers get little support from employers, or unions. Credit: Cam McGrath/IPS.

By Cam McGrath
CAIRO, Oct 18 2012 (IPS)

Ahmed Hassanein works in a modern factory in an industrial enclave west of Cairo. He wears a neatly pressed uniform and operates precision calibrated machinery on a line that produces components for foreign-brand passenger vehicles.

When his shift ends, he returns home to a simple two-room flat with no air conditioning and sporadic water and electricity. The bedroom fits a bed and little else. His two children share a small cot in an alcove that was once a balcony.

Hassanein’s salary covers the rent, utility bills, and meals that occasionally include meat or fish. But even with the income his wife earns from a part-time clerical job, his family rarely has money left over at the end of the month.

The 37-year-old industrial worker is just one among countless Egyptians who toil in factories for meagre wages, unable to afford the products they help manufacture.

“My father had a Fiat, which I drove for a number of years until it gave out, but I’ve never bought my own car,” says Hassanein, who like most of his colleagues takes a bus to work.

Hassanein wasn’t born into poverty, he fell into it, along with millions of other middle-class Egyptian families pulled downwards by diminishing purchasing power.

In the four decades since former president Anwar El-Sadat announced his ‘Infitah’ (Open Door) economic policy, private capital has flooded into Egypt on the back of measures that promoted the country as an owner-friendly, low-wage investment destination. Firms enjoyed cheap land, tax holidays and subsidised energy while the state repressed union activity and eviscerated labour standards.

Political economist Amr Adly says market liberalisation and neoliberal economic policies were a boon for foreign corporations and wealthy Egyptians, but the resulting unemployment, corruption, and uneven distribution of wealth were primary factors behind the uprising last year that toppled president Hosni Mubarak.

“The economy was growing at seven or eight percent before the revolution, but there was no trickle down effect,” Adly told IPS. “Wages in many sectors lagged far behind inflation.”

Mubarak’s legacy is a country of 83 million people in which a quarter of the population lives below the UN-recognised poverty line of two dollars a day. About 13 percent of Egypt’s 26-million-strong workforce is officially unemployed, and many work in a huge parallel economy where job security is absent.

Wages here are among the lowest in the world. The national minimum wage was set at 700 Egyptian pounds (115 dollars) a month last year after stagnating at 35 Egyptian pounds (under six dollars at today’s rate) for over two decades.

“We want better pay, but every path is blocked,” says Hassanein. “In the end you take your salary and thank God that at least you have a job.”

Under Mubarak, workers were discouraged from unionising – or if they did, required to join one of 24 syndicates affiliated to the Egyptian Trade Union Federation (ETUF). Activists say the colossal state-controlled labour organisation served the interests of the government and factory owners by blocking workers’ attempts to strike or engage in collective bargaining.

ETUF’s board was dissolved after the 2011 uprising, but many of its union heads, chosen in sham elections for their loyalty to Mubarak’s regime, are still in place. The federation’s 3.5 million members pay union dues, but receive few benefits or support in return.

When textile worker Kareem El-Beheiry joined a strike to demand better wages, it was his own trade union – in league with the publicly-owned factory’s manager – that tried to stop him.

“The state-backed unions have never respected the rights of workers,” says 27-year-old El-Beheiry, now a project manager at an NGO that helps workers unionise. “Workers are forced to pay syndicate dues every month, but the (official) unions are only interested in supporting the government and company management.”

El-Beheiry was among the 24,000 workers at a state-owned textile mill in the northern Egyptian town Mahalla El-Kubra who defied their official stooge union heads and went on strike in December 2006 over unpaid bonuses. The defiant act sparked a flurry of wildcat strikes now widely seen as a catalyst for the mass uprising that ended Mubarak’s rule.

The strike wave has continued to this day, encompassing every economic sector and region of the country. Last year saw a record 1,400 collective actions, according to Sons of the Land, a local human rights group.

One consequence of the labour unrest is that emboldened workers have increasingly challenged ETUF’s hegemony over trade union activities, organising themselves into independent syndicates that protect their interests, not the state’s. Workers managed to establish four independent trade unions before the 2011 uprising. More than 800 have been formed in the last 18 months, representing an estimated three million workers.

“We’re building independent and democratic unions that are accountable to workers and give them their rights,” says Kamal Abou Eita, president of the Egyptian Federation of Independent Trade Unions (EFITU), an umbrella for hundreds of independent unions.

But analysts say the new regime, much like its predecessor, wants to keep workers contained and controlled.

The Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist group from which Egypt’s new president hails, has extensive business interests and a long history of anti-union activities. The group’s members in government have signalled a continuation of the old regime’s economic policies – which critics say come at the expense of labour wages and security.

“The Muslim Brotherhood doesn’t want strong unions,” asserts Hadeer Hassan, a local labour journalist. “They label striking workers as ‘thugs’ and want to prohibit union plurality.”

Egypt’s new labour minister, a prominent Brotherhood member and former ETUF deputy, has submitted a draft law that would require workers in each enterprise to select just one trade union to represent them. If passed, labour rights advocates say the legislation would eliminate most independent unions, which exist alongside their larger ETUF counterparts.

“Then we’re back to the way it was under Mubarak,” says Hassan.

Many Palestinian labourers from the Shuafat refugee camp across the barrier work on construction in the Israeli settlement Pisgat Zeev in East Jerusalem to the right. Credit: Jillian Kestler-D’Amours/IPS.

By Jillian Kestler-D'Amours
RAMALLAH, Occupied West Bank, Sep 25 2012 (IPS)

Hassan Hader’s application for a permit to work in Israel has been rejected four times. Now waiting to hear back from the Israeli authorities on his latest attempt, the 52-year-old father of five said he has no choice but to keep applying.

“I wasn’t even given a reason why my application was rejected,” said Hader, who worked at a quarry in the industrial zone of Ma’ale Adumim, one of Israel’s largest illegal West Bank settlements, for nearly 20 years before losing his job last year.

Hader lives in Ramallah and holds a West Bank-only ID card. He told IPS that he has no viable job opportunities in the Palestinian labour market. With his family’s savings slowly running out after over a year without work, he said that getting a permit to work in Israel is his only option.

“I’m tired,” he said. “It’s not a good situation.”

Recently, local media reported that the Israeli government plans to increase the number of work permits allocated to Palestinian labourers from the West Bank. In an e-mail to IPS, Barak Granot, spokesperson for the Israeli Ministry of Industry, Trade, and Labour, confirmed that an additional 5,000 permits would be issued to Palestinians to work in the Israeli construction industry.

“The increase was decided in order to assist and ease the stress and lack of employment in the West Bank on one hand, and to ease the shortage of workers in the Israeli construction sector on the other hand. This decision was made according to the government policy to favour Palestinian workers, rather than other foreign workers,” Granot stated.

The Israeli Civil Administration (ICA), the Israeli military body that controls over 60 percent of the occupied West Bank, echoed this sentiment. “The increase in permit granting is supposed to reduce the activity of the foreign workers who stay in Israel for long periods, and might settle here. As opposed to them, Palestinians arrive in Israel (during the) day and usually leave in the evening,” the ICA told IPS in an e-mailed statement.

As Israel imposed restrictions on Palestinian freedom of movement after the outbreak of the second Intifadah (Palestinian uprising), migrant workers from the Philippines, China, Thailand and Eastern Europe, among other areas, gradually replaced the Palestinian workforce.

Recently, however, an influx of migrant workers and asylum seekers in Israel has caused panic among Israeli leaders, who say the presence of non-Jewish foreigners threatens the country’s Jewish character.

In response, the government has decided to gradually lower its quota of work permits for foreign workers, and has placed more limits on these workers’ freedoms once in the country, including binding caregivers to their employers and to specific places in Israel.

The Israeli Civil Administration told IPS that there are currently 57,095 Palestinian workers employed in Israel and in Israeli settlements, and that permits for 8,000 more Palestinian workers would soon be approved, in addition to the 5,000 extra permits for construction workers.

Palestinians must be over 26 years old, married, and must pass a security check to be eligible for the permits, the ICA stated.

According to an April 2012 World Bank report titled ‘Towards Economic Sustainability of a Future Palestinian state’, between 2000-2004 the number of Palestinians working in the Israeli labour market fell from 26 percent to less than 12 percent. In 2010, approximately 14 percent of the West Bank workforce was employed in Israel or in Israeli settlements.

Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip, however, have been barred from entering Israel or the West Bank for work since 2006. Israel also stops almost all Palestinian products from being exported from the Gaza Strip.

“Gaza is undergoing a process of de-development where the economy is being dismantled. It’s an economy that is not allowed to be productive. Certainly allowing workers in Gaza to return to their jobs in Israel would provide a boost of hard-earned income to families who need it desperately,” said Sari Bashi, director of Gisha, the Israeli legal centre for freedom of movement.

According to the United Nations, the unemployment rate in the occupied Palestinian territories was 26 percent in 2011. Unemployment among youth, aged 15-29, was even higher, sitting at 35 percent and 53 percent in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, respectively.

“There needs to be recognition that Israel has obligations to those that are under occupation and who are trying to make a living,” Bashi told IPS.

Gisha estimates that approximately 60,000 Palestinians from the West Bank – half with permits, half without – enter Israel every day for work. A better-regulated system could reduce the risks involved for Palestinian labourers who enter Israel illegally, Bashi added.

In late July, a Palestinian man was killed and three others were wounded when Israeli soldiers manning a Jerusalem-area checkpoint opened fire at their car which was carrying over a dozen Palestinian workers trying to enter Israel without permits.

“I am sure that it will not be the last incident and it’s not the first against Palestinian workers,” Shawan Jabarin, director of Palestinian human rights organisation Al Haq told IPS. “Most of the people have no salaries. They just want money to feed their families.”

Hassan Hader knows people who enter Israel illegally for work, but the consequences of getting caught – both for himself and for his family – deter him from even trying.

“It’s too risky to go into Israel without a permit,” he said. “I want to go through the door, not through the window.”